UISPP / IUPPS | XV Congress / XV Congrès | Book of Abstracts / Livre des Résumés Session WS02 Monday, 4 September 2006 / Lundi, 4 Septembre 2006 Room 11.04, Faculty of Law, Lisbon University Salle 11.04, Faculté de Droit, Université de Lisbonne Megalithic quarrying Sourcing, extracting and manipulating the stones organized by / organisé par Chris SCARRE University of Cambridge, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge, UK -
[email protected] SESSION’S ABSTRACT In his famous 1872 volume “Rude Stone Monuments” architect James Fergusson commented on the inherently peculiar nature of megalithic architecture, which chose to employ large stone slabs that were frequently unmodified and unshaped. Sunsequent studies of the megalithic slabs themselves have focused mainly on their geological origin and the distances over which they had been transported. The materiality of the slabs and they way that they were extracted from their source material has been only rarely addressed, although megalithic ‘quarries’ have occasionally been identified, and the deployment of glacial boulders in North European monuments is a well- known phenomenon. The session proposed here will study the two ends of the megalithic process: starting with the extraction of the stones, and ending with the precise manner in which they were incorporated in the monuments. How far did the character and availability of certain types of material constrain and direct monument form? The presence or absence of shaping and smoothing, along with other aspects of selection in the choice and placement of the individual slabs, will also be addressed. This aim is to identify what it was about the ‘megalithic’ quality of the slabs that inspired this kind of construction.